Something Worth Avenging
by A Writer's Second
Summary: When Thanos arrived, the Wizarding World wasn't ready. How could they have been? Harry is left as the sole survivor of a genocide that wiped out his entire race - all the magicals of Earth succumbed to the wrath of the Chitauri. But leaving Harry alive was a mistake, and he would make damn sure Thanos regretted it.
1. Chapter 1

There were no survivors.

The attack happened suddenly, without any indication or warning that it was coming. The magical community barely was prepared for threats from within its own boundaries - they never had a chance against the extraterrestrial threat that was the Chitauri Empire.

Stupefy didn't work. The spell just bounced off the metal bodies of the aliens. _Avada Kedavra _was only slightly more effective - sure, it worked as advertised, dropping Chitauri where they stood - but when one fell ten more took its place.

The magical world lasted five hours. Harry had watched as Hogwarts was razed to the ground; defended the innocents at Diagon Alley; held the last line of defense at his own home, not even questioning when the Elder Wand had appeared in his hand, only thankful for the boost in power that allowed him to fend off the aliens for a few moments more.

He had snapped when Ginny was ripped in half.

* * *

Gripping the Elder Wand, Harry unleashed Fiendfyre, rage coursing through his veins. Harry hadn't used the spell in years - not since Voldemort - because he knew that one mistake, one lapse in concentration, and the entire world of magic would be at risk of burning.

But there wasn't a community left to burn.

That thought alone sent the flames leaping up stories in height, magical fire feeding off of his despair and anger to raze more of the countryside. Chitauri fled into the skies in an attempt to escape the destruction but the flame leapt after them, not willing to let fuel escape its grasp.

Harry sat in the eye of the blaze, the body of his wife laying next to him. He did not make any effort to control the fire. It would burn until there was nothing left to burn… and then, it would turn on him, feeding on its creator as the last course before it died.

He was okay with that.

His children died at Hogwarts. His friends died defending their families. Everyone with enough sense to apparate away got caught by some kind of barrier and died a horrible death where they stood. Chitauri ripped through innocents with terrifying efficiency, and yet they did not touch Harry.

It wasn't as if he hadn't been in situations where the Chitauri had overrun him - no, he had been at the massacre at Diagon Alley.

But the Chitauri always let him live. They didn't touch him, regardless of how many of them he killed. It was maddening.

As the blaze burned around him, he mused. It was ironic, he thought, that the man who was labelled the savior of the wizarding world was its sole survivor, and even more ironic that he was the one setting it ablaze now. Nothing would stop the blaze now, and so Harry positioned his body next to Ginny's and laid down, shutting his eyes as he prepared to be scorched.

* * *

Which is why he was slow to react when the world went purple and the flames died.

He saw the purple glow through his eyelids, and he snapped into action - grabbing the invisibility cloak from Ginny's body and covering himself completely while gripping the Elder Wand. Whatever was able to _erase _his Fiendfyre like that commanded some serious power - in all likelihood he was about to face the leader of the invasion.

His grip tightened on the Elder Wand. This would probably be his last stand, but he wasn't going to go down without taking whatever hellish being orchestrated the genocide of an entire race of people with him.

Slowly coming to a crouch to allow the cloak to adjust to his movement, he surveyed the area, eyes almost immediately locking onto a massive purple figure. The figure was looking around, clearly searching for someone.

'Probably me', Harry mused.

His breath caught when the titan's eyes moved to his hiding place but he was relieved as his gaze swept over where Harry was hidden. Capitalizing on the deception of his cloak, Harry slowly moved behind the monster and took a moment of survey his foe.

The titan wore golden armor and carried a massive, double-bladed sword in one hand. On the other was a golden gauntlet that held two stones - one blue and one purple. Harry keyed in on the purple stone, figuring it had something to do with the power that had caused his Fiendfyre to disappear.

Slowly reaching out with his wand, Harry hesitated for a moment before casting.

"Accio _purple stone_," Harry whispered and was shocked when the gem did not immediately jump from the gauntlet into his hands. Instead, the titan's arm lurched and the monster spun around shocked at the sudden attack. Harry increased the amount of power flowing through the deathstick in response, granting it access to his entire magical reserve which, despite just casting Fiendfyre was still comparatively massive.

The stone wrest itself from the gauntlet with an audible _pop_, and flew into Harry's hand as he shed the protection from the cloak.

Now able to see his adversary, the titan lurched forward with a mighty punch which Harry was quick to counter with a Protego shield. The barrier quaked and Harry stumbled, but the shield held, buying the time needed for the stone to reach Harry's hand.

Harry allowed himself a grim smile, thinking he had robbed the titan of his power source.

And then the pain hit him.

It felt like his body was being torn apart. Power flooded into every inch of his body and he felt like he was about to combust. Screaming, Harry willed his magic to do _something - _pleading with it to save him from this agony. In response, the Elder Wand flared to life, releasing a vibrant purple stream from the tip into the titan who flew back hundreds of yards.

The beam became wider and wider as more power flooded into it, until in front of Harry's outstretched arm there was a wall of purple magic. Harry didn't know what spell it was, or even if it was a spell at all, but the magic was a force of sheer destruction on a scale that even Fiendfyre could not hope to match. The countryside didn't explode, or erupt in flames - it simply was _erased _when it came into contact with the raw power emanating from his wand.

Harry grit his teeth. Though the vast majority of the power was being funneled through the Elder Wand, his body was still - _painfully _\- absorbing some of the raw power from the stone. He felt his insides warp as the power altered his body, _changed _him in ways he couldn't describe. He screamed as the stone suddenly started outputting much more power than it already had been and his body started taking in more and more of the excess energy.

And then as quickly as it had started, it was over and Harry was left gasping for breath and the stone hummed in his hand. When he caught his breath he looked down at the gem in his left hand and he felt almost a wave of satisfaction come from it.

_You are worthy_, the stone seemed to project.

Harry felt invincible. Power coursed through his veins as his magic sang with might. He looked over at where the titan had been launched. He took one step…

And tendrils of stone snapped around his mouth, neck, arms and legs, spreading his body out over a slab of ground that rose up to meet his back painfully. Harry grunted through the stone gag and tightened the grip on his wand, intent on casting something to get out of this trap. In response, the rock tightened further causing Harry to wince in pain and loosen his grip on the deathstick, spell momentarily forgotten.

As Harry was trying to get his bearings on the situation he found himself in, he was suddenly spun to come face-to-face with the titan he had sent flying and a handful of henchmen. A tall, pale _man _(though he hardly qualified for that term) was holding up a hand and was gesturing at him, leading to Harry deducing that he was responsible for whatever telekinetic attack he found himself subjected to.

Another pale man ('_creature'_, thought Harry) was standing protectively in front of the titan, a nasty sword gripped tightly in his hands as he glared at Harry. An equally pale woman was standing next to that man, a staff in her hand crackling with electric blue energy. A hulking brute stood behind them all, a massive hammer over its shoulder.

It brought a sense of satisfaction to Harry to see that the underlings all sported serious burns over their bodies.

"Harry Potter," The titan stepped forward before sitting on a rock. Harry leveled a glare at the titan, refusing to look away from his eyes.

Harry said something from behind his gag. The monster gestured to the telekinetic lackey and the tendril of rock retracted from his mouth.

"You monster! Those were my people!" Harry spat, and the other tendrils tightened to deadly levels, forcing a gag and cough out of Harry as the psychic growled at him.

"Insolent whelp! I will kill you for your cheek!" The ebony man spat back, but the titan raised his arm.

"You will _not_. His race will not go extinct." The monster said.

Harry scoffed.

"Oh, you care about us not going extinct?! Real convincing after you _murdered literally everyone except me_." He fired, and to his surprise the monster winced.

"I came to retrieve the stone, not eradicate your people. But your resistance was… frightening to the Chitauri, and they reacted like the savages they are." The monster admitted.

"That changes nothing." Harry replied, and the titan nodded.

"No, it does not. Yet the fact remains; I do not want to end your people. But…" Weapons were drawn and the chains binding him once again grew tight.

"I will not hesitate if you do not tell me where your people have hidden the stone." He finished, and looked up directly into Harry's eyes.

"Who are you?" Harry fired back instead of responding to the threat.

"I am Thanos."

Harry's mind was racing a mile a minute. He was sure that this _Thanos _was seeking another stone as powerful as the one Harry currently held, but he was sure that he had never come across an artifact powerful enough to literally tear his body apart as he held it. It dawned on him.

"The resurrection stone." It was barely a whisper but it may as well have been a scream in the silence of the field. A ghost of a smile grew on Thanos' face as he replied.

"The _resurrection stone_. Such a crude name for something as powerful as one of the infinite six. I come seeking the Time Stone."

"How did you know we had this _Time Stone_? We didn't even call it that and not many of us even knew that it existed in the first place." Harry queried.

"I received intel that the Time Stone was on this planet, guarded by the warlocks of Earth. I was told that the stone was under the protection of the champion of these warlocks, the Sorcerer Supreme." At this, Thanos looked at Harry.

"You." Thanos finished.

"Sorcerer Supreme? I have never heard that title in my life!" Harry shouted, before continuing quietly.

"Besides, I got rid of the stone ages ago."

"Where is it?" Thanos demanded, raising his gauntlet.

Harry's laugh was mirthless.

"The Forbidden Forest, which I razed not an hour ago."

Harry stopped laughing when a blue portal swallowed the entire group.

* * *

When the portal collapsed, Harry found himself in what once was a familiar clearing.

"How did you…" Harry trailed off, not expecting an answer to his question. As he expected, Thanos completely ignored him and instead ordered his underlings to find the stone.

It was the woman that eventually spoke, thrusting her hand into the scorched earth.

"Here, lord. I sensed great power coming from this location."

She pulled her hand back through the earth and in it was a familiar smooth stone. Harry paled. He did not know what the stone was truly capable of, but he suspected he was about to find out.

Thanos narrowed his eyes before he turned to Harry.

"This is the stone?" He demanded.

Harry could only nod in response.

Thanos took the stone from the woman and stared at it before smiling.

"Yes, there is immense power coming from this," Thanos agreed before setting the stone into his gauntlet.

The stone burst with incredible power, energy expelling from the hallow in a blinding wave. Harry felt the bindings restraining him loosen and he capitalized on the situation, casting bombarda on the man holding him. The ebony man was knocked out cold and the rock bindings slipped away completely, allowing Harry to stand. Thanos turned to Harry, eyes full of rage.

"A trick!" He bellowed, "I will end you, sorcerer! My mercy is at an end." Thanos brought his sword down onto Harry's head but to everyone's shock, his blow was completely stopped by an invisible barrier.

The only mark of a shield was a very familiar emblem glowing of black fire in the air.

"The Hallows… I combined them." Harry gasped, and quickly shook his head. No time for that, he had bigger problems.

Harry thrust out with the hand holding the stone, causing Thanos and his lackeys to fly back several dozen yards before crashing into the ground.

Thanos was the first to get up, and he rushed towards Harry, swinging his sword. Harry dodged out of the way and sent a Reducto into Thanos' exposed side, knocking him back a few yards.

"I will raze this earth and pluck the Time Stone from its ashes and then I will reset time and do it _again and again! _Your penance for this trickery is the destruction of your entire planet!"

Harry narrowed his eyes.

"Hell no."

And with that, he closed his eyes fully and channeled all the energy the powerful stone was offering him into one, massive spell. He focused on the ground in front of him, the very air surrounding the villains and just as he felt the wind from the massive broadsword come down over his head, he whispered one word.

"_Portus._"

Then there was silence, and Harry opened his eyes to a world that he burned down, but one that he saved.

And Harry wept.

* * *

**A/N: And so begins my take on a crossover that _definitely _hasn't been overused lately. Regardless of how many of these stories exist, though, I couldn't get this idea out of my head and so here we are: a story that - at the time of me writing this - has no name. I'm hoping to get a unique take on this crossover and not just drop Harry into Avengers 1 or Iron Man 1 like I see so many of these stories do. Not that those stories are bad because of that - no, I have read some utterly brilliant stories on this website that start with Harry wandering into New York or Malibu at the right (wrong?) time. **

**I think that is about all I want to say. I hope you all enjoyed the start of this story! **


	2. Chapter 2

**Spoiler Warning for Avengers: Endgame**

* * *

Thanos would be back.

Harry knew that for a fact. Not only was Thanos convinced that Harry was hiding the Time Stone, Harry also held another one of his precious gems in his hand.

But honesty, Harry didn't care about that fact right now. It hadn't even been six hours since the invasion started and Harry had literally lost his entire world. He had to start over.

After sending Thanos to God-knows-where with his overpowered portus spell, Harry had broken down and wept for the losses of his friends, of his children, of Ginny. And all for what? A mistake? Thanos was wrong - the magical world did not have the Time Stone. If they did, Thanos certainly would have found it when he razed the Ministry - the Unspeakables were the most likely group to have harnessed that power.

That led Harry to realize that one of two things must be true.

Either Thanos' intel was completely wrong and the Time Stone wasn't on Earth - something that Harry was still trying to wrap his mind around; before today he hadn't believed on life anywhere but Earth but today his planet was invaded by literal aliens - or, something much more worrying than simple alien life: somewhere on the planet was another group of wizards, a group that was able to hide itself much more effectively than the Wizarding World was able to.

And if that was the case, then Harry wanted words with their Sorcerer Supreme. The Elder Wand twitched in his hand.

Some very specific words.

* * *

Not much was left of Diagon Alley after the invasion and Harry's Fiendfyre curse. A small pile of charred rubble marked what once was the proud monument that was Gringotts bank. Harry clambered his way through the rubble towards it and was morbidly pleased to see that the floor was still intact, meaning that the sub-levels were likely unaffected by the destruction.

Harry sent a wave of stone-boosted magic out, hoping against all hope to sense life anywhere below the ground.

He was unsuprised but saddened when his magical query came back as a negative.

'Even the Goblins weren't crafty enough to escape that hell' Harry thought.

* * *

With the enchantments fallen, robbing the entire wizarding world blind was pretty easy. Vault doors were destroyed or transfigured into sand and their contents were summoned into Hagrid's moleskin pouch which had long since been charmed to be bottomless. His own vault contained countless items that were sure to be useful to him in the future: spare wands, broomsticks he had collected over the years, etcetera.

Galleons, Sickles, and Knuts flew into the bag along with priceless magical artifacts, weapons, and grimoires. Harry wasn't ever planning on returning to this graveyard, but he was going to make sure magic lived on.

And while Galleons may be useless in the muggle world, the gold they were made of most certainly was not and Harry planned to take full advantage of that when he relocated.

Once Harry was satisfied that he had taken everything that survived the invasion, he turned to the stone once more to power a massive spell. International portkeys were hard enough to create but combined with the fact that Harry had never been to his destination before it should have been impossible for him to create a portkey to Toronto, Canada. With the power granted to him by the stone and the Elder Wand, though, Harry was able to charm a pebble to probably take him where he wanted to go.

With that, he had only one more affair to attend to.

He opened his palm and looked down at the stone that rested in his hand. The stone, as if sensing what he was thinking, began to hum almost dejectedly.

Harry, not bothering to question that he was speaking to a stone, started talking.

"As long as I have you, Earth is in constant danger. If I send you away, Thanos may hold off invading Earth for a while longer." The stone hummed again, as if to say Thanos will come anyway.

"I know," Harry sighed. "I can't prevent that. But if I can delay it, maybe I can figure out a way to beat Thanos. It's not much, but it's all I've got."

The stone hummed once more.

"I agree. If I come across you again, once Thanos is beaten, I'll keep you. But for now…"

Harry used the stone to charge up one final, ludicrously overpowered spell before tossing the stone into the air and hitting it with the most powerful banishing charm ever cast. Harry watched it disappear into the sky and was satisfied that he had succeeded in sending it light years away into space. He turned around, intent on finding a smooth patch of ground to portkey to Canada on.

And came face to face with himself.

Well, almost himself. The Harry Potter he was starting at was decidedly older than Harry was and rocked the killer facial hair that Harry had been trying to grow since "graduating" Hogwarts.

"Who the hell are you?" Harry asked his doppelganger.

"You were abused for eleven years by your aunt and uncle. When you were killed by Voldemort, you met Albus Dumbledore at King's Cross station. You really wanted to stop after one kid but Ginny had a hell of a persuasion technique," the other Harry chuckled as he finished.

Harry lowered his wand.

"Alright, you got me. Want to explain why I traveled back in time to this particular moment? I can't imagine wanting to relive this." Harry grimaced, spreading his arms out wide.

"I need the Power Stone you're about to banish back to Morag."

"Morag?" Harry questioned. "I didn't send it anywhere specific, I just banished the thing."

"You've already banished the stone?!" The other Harry shouted, looking down at his watch.

"Shit, this is really bad. I could've sworn I hadn't done that yet."

"Alright," Harry held his hand up, "What is going on?"

His older self sighed wearily before taking out a small red canister and duplicating it.

"Alright, Hulk, you'd better be right about this not creating paradoxes…" He muttered before looking up at Harry.

"You're gonna want to sit down for this."

Harry nodded, trusting the advice of himself and plopped down on some nearby wreckage.

"I was right. Thanos returned."

Harry nodded, unsurprised at the news.

"He kicked our asses, bad, and wiped out exactly half the life in the universe. A few days ago we tracked him down and killed him. His endgame was to retire on a garden planet and become a farmer." He scoffed.

"Did you kill him?"

The older Harry shook his head but flashed a mirthless smile.

"No, but I got a hell of a shot on him. Point is, though, the Avengers - that's the team I'm on, by the way, you'll find out later - are jumping around in time right now to recover the stones and stop him before he comes to Earth."

"You can save them, then?" Harry asked, a glimmer of hope shining in his eyes but the older Harry just shook his head.

"As far as I understand it, we can only save those killed in the snap. Anyone else is just gone… I'm sorry, man."

Harry swallowed and looked down for a moment. When he looked back up, his eyes were resolute.

"What do I need to do?"

The older Harry nodded in satisfaction.

"Good attitude. Took me a lot longer to get to that point. For one, skip Canada. Go directly to New York City - you're going to end up there sooner or later, anyway. What year is it?" He suddenly asked.

"2011, why?"

"Sooner, then. Just skip Canada. All you figure out there is that syrup is really good. Secondly, read those grimoires before you become an animagus. There's a hell of a sketchy ritual that'll allow you to have a handful of forms instead of just one. I found it the day after I completed the transformation. Thirdly…" He trailed off.

"Well, that's actually all I'm going to tell you. Oh, wait!" The older Harry snapped, clearly remembering something.

"The Power Stone increased your power a thousandfold when you went all Rambo and absorbed a ton of energy from it. Experiment with that, and also find out exactly what the hell being the 'Master of Death' entails. I never did." He finished.

"And with that, I've got to go out-thief a thief. Good luck, me."

The helmet of the white and red suit the older Harry wore snapped back into place and he disappeared, leaving Harry to ponder exactly what he had been told.

Eventually, he decided to process everything later and focus on what he needed to do now. He stared at the portkey in his hand.

"How the hell do I get to New York?"

* * *

The answer was a lot of flying. Thanks to his Firebolt, the trip was somewhat short but flying through cloud cover was not particularly fun - or dry.

By his reckoning, Harry had been somewhere over upstate New York when the flying lady had tried to smite him.

* * *

Harry practically threw himself off the broom in an attempt to avoid another blast of lightning. He fired spell after spell towards the woman flying somewhere near him, but without a clear line of sight it was a hopeless endeavor - the blinding rain combined with the literal lightning he had to avoid was doing a fine job of keeping his eyes away from his foe.

Rolling to the opposite side to avoid another bolt, Harry weighed his options. Landing seemed like a good choice until he considered that he would still be attempting to fight an airborne opponent. Plus, he'd lose the mobility that his broom granted him, and he wasn't willing to risk that. If even one of those lightning bolts hit him… He gulped as a very lethal bolt flashed in the spot he had occupied just a moment prior… Well, Harry wasn't too optimistic about his chances of survival.

The second option was stupid. Harry had absolutely no idea if it would even work, and so many things could go wrong that he was surprised he was even considering it as an option.

'Though I probably shouldn't be too surprised,' He mused, 'Doing the stupid is pretty much my M.O.'

He shook his head to snap himself back into focus.

Powered flight was possible - both Voldemort and Snape had pulled it off - but Harry had never quite figured out the mechanics behind it.

Harry estimated that he had approximately three seconds to figure it out before the next lightning strike careened at him. If he could figure it out, he could don the invisibility cloak without worrying about a broom making the ruse pointless.

Then he would be in business.

He figured the best place to start would be to cast a ludicrously overpowered levitation charm on himself and see what happened. So, dodging the next strike, Harry didn't allow himself the time to think before shrinking his broom and screaming the incantation.

"Wingardium Leviosa!" Harry bellowed, Elder Wand pointed straight at his chest. For a sickening moment, nothing happened and Harry plummeted downwards. Then, as suddenly as the falling started it stopped and Harry was left screaming in midair.

Not, of course, that Harry had been screaming.

Harry looked upwards, barely able to make out the dark-skinned figure among the pouring rain. She looked to be contemplating Harry, waiting him to make some kind of move.

And so he did, donning the invisibility cloak and vanishing before sending out a banishing charm in front of him. He wasn't counting on it hitting anything, but it did send him backwards and away from the spot he knew would be struck by lightning moments after he disappeared.

Sure enough, a blast of electricity arched through the spot he had vanished from. Harry pointed his wand downwards and cast a few more banishing charms until he was on level with his adversary. She was whipping her head around, trying to find any indication of where he had vanished to.

He knew that it wouldn't be too long before she saw the rain bouncing off where he was, and so he banished his way over to directly behind her before sending a bolt of red magic directly into her skull.

He really hadn't figured that she would start falling.

Cursing quietly, Harry banished himself directly downwards and released the levitation charm, letting himself go into freefall as he tried to catch up to the girl who had already disappeared below him. He didn't want to kill her, after all - he needed answers as to why she was attacking him in the first place. Through the diminishing storm, he could see the dark ground rapidly approaching.

The invisibility cloak's hood flew off his head as he fell. There was no way he would be able to reach her in time - she was too far ahead and he was barely going to have enough time to catch himself.

In a last-ditch effort, Harry pointed the deathstick at the falling woman and shot a levitation spell towards her. He saw the spell take effect and stop the woman dead in her tracks. Sighing in relief, he didn't notice as he was stopped, too.

He did, however, notice when the red laser beam smashed into his chest and sent him flying to the ground below.

As he hit the ground, he rolled with the momentum, gripping his wand and firing a shield charm as he stood. The charm stopped another blast but was unable to do anything when he felt himself grabbed psychically and thrown into a tree. Harry quickly cast a cushioning charm at the tree but the speed of the impact still knocked the wind out of him. When he landed, he tried to roll away but found that his entire lower body had been completely encased in ice and frozen to the ground beneath him.

Standing above him was a man quite literally made out of ice, but Harry Potter was far too furious to comprehend that in any way beyond tactical reasoning.

"Ice? Damn, that's a bummer. Incendio Maxima!" Harry bellowed, pointing his wand straight at the man. A torrent of flame leapt from his wand and scorched the other man who screamed and tried to retaliate with a beam of ice. Harry's rage-fueled fire charm was easily beating out the ice, though, and was very, very close to striking the ice-man again when an invisible shield was conjured in front of him, sending the flames outward around it.

A short, hairy man in a yellow costume rushed Harry but Harry was quick to turn and apparated with a crack ten or so feet to his right.

He raised his wand.

"Bombarda! Stupefy! Stupefy! Incendo! Bombarda!" He shouted, sending a chain of spells at the group of people attacking him. The initial Bombarda landed at the feet of the group, sending dirt and chunks of rock into the air in front of them and allowing the two stunning spells to slip through unnoticed. The fire charm also landed, judging by the pained scream he heard from behind the dust and the last Bombarda sent the ice-man flying away into the woods.

Harry smelled sulfur before something heavy and metal came crashing into the back of his head.

The lights went out.

* * *

When the lights came back on, Harry found himself frozen to a tree. His wand was frozen to the ground in front of him, and he was facing a very irate group of people.

The short man from before got up in Harry's face before snarling.

"You'd better start talking, bub. Why'd you attack Storm, and where tha' hell is Magneto hiding?" He demanded.

Harry blinked, trying to process what the tiny man was saying.

"First of all, I didn't attack Storm, she attacked me! I was defending myself." Harry stopped to catch a breath while leveling a glare at the now-conscious Storm who had the dignity to look away.

"Secondly, who the bloody hell is Magneto?"

The man snarled again and flexed his right hand. Harry caught glimpse of three wickedly sharp claws burst from his knuckles before they were jabbed painfully into his chin.

"Funny guy. Start talking, or I start slicin'." He grinned, a feral contortion of his face that showed off pointed canine teeth.

"And ya don't need your legs to tell me what I want to know, bub."

A different voice cut in.

"Logan, we do not do torture."

"Shut it, Boy Scout. This little shit just showed off an entire arsenal of powers. Who knows what we're dealing with." Logan scoffed.

"Besides, for all we know he has a healing factor. He could be fine."

Harry thought that now would be a good time to cut in.

"Definitely no healing factor here. You cut my leg off and that shit stays on the ground."

Logan shrugged.

"He could be lyin'."

"I'm not -" Harry started to interject, but he was cut off by the "Boy Scout".

"Stand down, Wolverine. We have other ways to get the information. Jean?" He turned to the psychic that had been responsible for flinging him around like a ragdoll and she nodded.

"I'm on it," Jean agreed, and closed her eyes.

_'What the hell is she doing?'_ Harry wondered before he felt it.

The telltale prickle of his occlumency shields being bypassed. How she got past them that easily was anyone's guess but Harry was highly experienced with expelling people from his mind.

And this Jean was no Voldemort.

Closing his eyes and retreating into his own mind, he quickly found the shocked Jean in his mind and expelled her out violently before slamming down his shields to - hopefully - prevent another invasion.

Opening his eyes, he saw Jean get thrown backwards by some unseen force as she shouted and clutched her head.

"Logan, you can torture him now." The Boy Scout

"What the hell did you just do to Jean?" Wolverine demanded, spittle flying into Harry's face. The man reared back and slammed his claws into Harry's thigh, breaking the ice but sending Harry to the ground.

Blood oozed from the wound as Harry suffered agonizing pain.

"Sh… She tried to violate my mind," Harry weakly protested, but it fell on deaf ears as he was hit with a ruby blast that sent him rolling backwards for a few yards.

When Harry stopped rolling, he knew he should have felt pain. He knew he should have been - at least a little - scared.

He wasn't.

Harry Potter was royally pissed.

Wandlessly summoning the Elder Wand to him, Harry began to cast some of the most lethal spells in his arsenal. Everything short of the Unforgivables flew from his wand as the wand meshed with his desire to inflict pain on the people who had attacked him.

Harry idly noticed Storm ascend into the rapidly darkening sky before he flicked his wand and sent her smashing back into the ground via summoned lightning.

'Ironic,' Harry grinned before turning back to his other foes.

He got a glimpse of whatever teleporting thing had taken him out earlier, and watched him carefully as he let the deathstick aid him in where to throw his next spell. The thing was teleporting rapidly, still trying to avoid the maelstrom of spells Harry was unleashing.

Harry closed his eyes and let the wand guide his instinct.

There.

Harry snapped his eyes open and pointed to a random spot about eight feet to his left. A smoky blue flash heralded the arrival of the blue creature before the stones Harry summoned from the ground were sent flying into him brutally, sending him out of the fight. The ice-man was next on Harry's list as he rapidly transfigured the ground around where he was standing into a lake which the ice-man's own temperature immediately froze solid, trapping him underground in a cube of ice.

It was just the Wolverine and the Boy Scout left standing under Harry's onslaught.

He looked down at his leg and saw the blood still gushing out of his wound and his rage was renewed. He felt an unearthly pressure in his chest start to build that no magic could claim.

Letting that pressure expand through his body, Harry holstered the Elder Wand and flung his hands outward.

He screamed, and it was like a bomb went off.

Harry was ground zero for the massive energy dispatch that sent everything within a hundred yards of him flying completely out of sight. One massive surge of purple energy released from Harry, but he did not feel drained in the slightest.

Instead, he felt invincible. He looked down at his wound and saw it knit itself together with tendrils of the purple energy. He felt the purple energy running across his skin like electricity.

It was waiting - begging - for him to unleash it in some kind of deadly attack.

A furious Harry was only too happy to oblige that particular request.

Gathering the energy in his hands, he started to form a massive attack in the general direction he had launched Wolverine in. Yelling, he allowed more and more energy to condense until it was rippling off of his body in waves of royal energy. He waited until he finally gathered enough energy to unleash a devastating attack and then…

He felt a hand on his side.

"Mr. Potter," a warm, distinctly familiar voice spoke, "I believe there has been a rather large misunderstanding."

As if the man had spoken an incantation the energy rushed back into Harry and he stumbled.

"Dumbledore?"

* * *

**AN: Wow, I'm incredibly shocked at how many people have viewed this story. It's been up for, what, three hours and already over a hundred and fifty people have seen this little work! That may not be a huge or significant number to some of you guys, but that's absolutely massive to me. Thanks to every single one of you for reading this!**

**And a review! Wow! As I was typing this AN I got a notification on my phone that someone went out of their way to leave a review. It means the world, so thank you, "Guest" for your kind words! I won't respond to every review in my postscript because I feel that would be an unnecessary way to just pad the word count but know that I absolutely will read all of them and every review will (with few exceptions, of course) put a smile on my face.**

**Me updating this quickly is entirely a fluke. Turns out that fanfiction has a 12-hour waiting period before you can post your first story so I took that time to start cracking on this chapter. I do not know how often I will update or even if it will be consistent, but I'm definitely planning on updating this thing somewhat frequently. And I'm certainly not planning on abandoning it. **

**I believe that's all I wanted to say, so I suppose I will see y'all in the next installation of this little fic.**


	3. Chapter 3

Director Fury stood in a scorched countryside, brow furrowed in frustration.

He had checked the maps. Double-checked the maps. Checked every single source on the internet and used every single available resource he had at his disposal in an attempt to find something - anything - that indicated that this wasteland hadn't always been completely empty.

Nothing.

And yet here he stood, in the middle of what clearly used to be the center of a small city. Blackened stone lay beneath his feet and charred wreckage dotted the sides of what clearly used to be a street.

A street that had no visible entrance from the middle of London, but a street nonetheless.

His agents scurried around collecting scraps of scorched samples to run diagnostics on - see how long this civilization had been here - and otherwise exploring this area that for all intents and purposes _should not exist_.

Two women dressed in the black uniform of his organization walked up to him.

"Romanoff, Hill." He acknowledged.

The redhead, Romanoff, responded to the unasked question.

"Director, you're going to want to see this."

* * *

Nick Fury stood at the top of what was obviously at one time a bank - or other similar structure, normally stoic face twitching in an unidentifiable emotion.

"Get me every single agent here. I want everything out of this bank and on the Helicarrier _yesterday_."

"Yes sir!" Hill snapped a salute before briskly walking away, shouting orders to agents she passed.

Fury just stood still, looking down at the wreckage of a rail system.

"Mother-"

* * *

The man, as it turned out, was absolutely _not _Albus Dumbledore.

Instead, Harry turned to face a bald man in a wheelchair dressed in a snappy suit.

"No, I'm afraid I am not Dumbledore," the man explained, "My name is Charles Xavier, and I run the school you were about to decimate."

Harry stood still for a moment, processing. Charles Xavier, as he introduced himself, was giving him _serious _Dumbledore vibes. They gave off the same kind, grandfatherly presence and both seemed to have a knack for knowing things they shouldn't. Once Harry's mind caught up to him, his train of thought derailed into a massive stream of questions.

Charles Xavier held up a single hand, completely halting Harry's train of thought.

"I promise, I will answer all of those questions. And yes - before you ask - I am indeed a telepath, much like Jean Grey. I believe you met her earlier."

The way Charles had said the word "met" _almost _made it sound like Harry _meeting _her hadn't nearly resulted in death.

Whose death it would have been was anyone's guess.

'_Wait, _telepath_. How is he getting past my occlumency barriers?' _Harry frantically thought.

'_And how much has he seen already?'_

"Enough to know that you most certainly are not the enemy nor were you sent by Max." Charles told him.

"And your barriers, while remarkable, simply are not designed to keep telepaths out. I suspect those barriers were designed to keep a much different type of intrusion out."

Harry nodded, willing to accept that explanation for the time being.

"I would certainly appreciate if you would be willing to accompany me back to the mansion for a cup of tea and a talk?" Charles continued.

"Yeah, I think I would like that. I have a lot of questions." Harry responded.

"And I hope that I have a lot of answers," Charles smiled.

"Now, if you would be so kind as to, erm, _restore _my team I would be grateful."

Harry frowned.

"Honestly, I'm not sure if I can," He admitted.

"Pardon me?"

* * *

To Charles' relief, Harry had been joking.

At least, that's what he told himself as the warlock had struggled through reversing the devastating effects of his spellwork.

Now, however, his team and Harry Potter stood glaring at each other from across the table. Logan refrained from snarling, thankfully, but only barely. The animosity was so palpable it was almost choking Charles.

* * *

Harry glared at the team he had very nearly destroyed not an hour prior. They had attacked him first, dammit! He absolutely refused to apologize for something he had no part in initiating. It was hard to explain yourself while someone was attempting to turn your veins into a circuit and the attempts certainly weren't making Harry feel like trying it in the first place.

It was fitting, then, that Storm broke the silence.

"Harry Potter, I am sorry," Storm started. Her teammates looked at her with varying degrees of betrayal, which Storm returned with sharp glares.

"He damn near killed the entire team!" Logan snapped.

"Because I attacked him without cause and gave him no chance to explain himself," Storm retorted, then sighed.

"I hope that you can somehow forgive me," She offered, looking at Harry.

"I don't know if I forgive you, yet, but that doesn't mean I won't. I just want to know why you attacked me so suddenly," Harry responded, nodding at Storm.

At this, everyone looked at Storm expectantly - they all wanted to know the reason as well.

Storm looked down, thinking for a moment, then looked back up and met Harry's eyes.

"You could not have known this, but Magneto - an old foe of ours - has been attacking the mansion frequently."

Harry nodded.

"And I look like him?" He asked, figuring that was the reason for the attack.

"No, you do not," she chuckled, "Magneto is a fair bit older and grayer than yourself."

"But Magneto hasn't been the one attacking us - he's been sending his lackeys," Logan cut in.

"Y'see, we stole something pretty damn important to the tin can." Logan reached into a safe and pulled out a red helmet.

"What's so special about the helmet?" Harry responded, reaching out with his magic. He was shocked to find that when his magic got close to the helmet, it was forced back into Harry.

"This helmet is the only thing protecting Magneto from a psychic invasion. And between myself and Professor X, we have two powerful telepaths ready for him," Jean cut in, before blushing.

"Sorry about throwing you around earlier."

"Its okay," Harry responded, "I'm sorry for trying to murder you all."

Claws extended.

"We don't fight to kill, bub."

"You stabbed me."

Claws retracted.

* * *

Harry stood outside of the Xavier Institute, Firebolt at full size in his hand.

Storm stepped forward from the group watching his departure.

"Are you sure you do not wish to stay? I believe that if we figure out how to work together the X-Men could become an even more formidable force than we already are."

Harry nodded.

"I'm sure that's true. But I can't stay. I've got pretty reliable intel," He chuckled inwardly, "that New York City is about to become very critical in my life. That's actually where I was going when you tried to smite me."

He ran a hand through his hair, sighing.

"Besides; that purple thing? I have no idea what it was. That's not something I can normally do, but it was powerful. I need to figure that out, along with a few other things, before I make any big decisions."

His cough sounded a lot like unpowered flight.

"And if this Magneto guy starts to bring the fight to you, call me. I don't have a phone, or a computer... " He trailed off, "or any way, really, to contact me. It can't be too hard for you guys, though - you have a pair of telepaths. I'm not ever going to deny my help, I just don't think I am called to be a part of this team."

With that, Harry mounted his broom and shot off.

There was silence on the ground for a moment before Logan chuckled.

"An honest-to-God broom. You've gotta be fuckin' kidding me."

* * *

"Barton, come in. Are you seeing this?"

"If you're referring to the man literally made out of electricity, yeah, Nat, I'm seeing this."

"Just making sure this wasn't a hallucination."

"Don't try that. We both know this isn't even close to the strangest thing we've seen."

"Budapest?"

"Hell yes, Budapest."

Clint notched an arrow.

"Hawkeye, stop," Came the voice of Nick Fury through his earpiece.

"He's got hostages."

Clint cursed.

Nat touched her earpiece.

"Orders?" She asked, staring down from the rooftop they were perched on to the cafe the electric man was holding hostage across the street.

"Watch and wait. Those hostages are being held for the cops, not you two. He doesn't know you're there. If things get hairy though…" Fury trailed off, not having to finish that sentence. His two agents knew exactly what to do.

"Yes, sir."

* * *

Harry hadn't planned on being a hostage, he was just hungry. The waitress had just set down his food when the man - Electro, as he was so apt to yell to anyone listening - burst in and flung his hands into the air, sending bolts of electricity into the ceiling and blacking out the restaurant. People started screaming and ducking under tables.

The people that tried to escape from the back door were quickly herded into the main room when Electro turned himself into some kind of current and near instantly reformed at the back door.

Harry was just enjoying his burger.

Something that, apparently, was a great insult to Electro.

A crackling hand smashed down on Harry's booth table, splashing some tea out of his cup.

"Why do you not cower in fear of the great Electro?!" Electro growled at Harry.

"Don't worry, I'm absolutely petrified," Harry rolled his eyes, noticing that the eyes of everyone else in the cafe were on them.

"Look, Electro, I've had the longest goddamn twenty four hours of my life and I really, really just want some food. I'll cower as soon as I'm done eating, alright? A compromise."

Electro was actually stunned into silence at Harry's blatant dismissal of his threat. It didn't last long, though, and with a furious snarl, Electro swiped Harry's dinner off of the table.

The food fell seemingly in slow motion for Harry. He watched as his burger fell apart in midair and hit the floor with a thwack. His tea - his tea! - hit the ground shortly after, the glass cup shattering upon impact.

Harry's jaw dropped.

Electro smirked.

"Dinner's over, you can cower now."

Harry barely heard Electro's words. He stood up slowly, allowing himself to get right into Electro's face.

"My people were all killed." He whispered.

"I just fought off a team of bloody mutants by myself." He continued.

"And now you have the gall to take away my food? Do you have any idea how hungry I am?!" Harry finished, sentence rising in volume until he was screaming in Electro's face.

"That does it, kid. You get to be the example." Electro charged his body up slowly, allowing Harry to take in his incoming doom.

"Sod off." Harry growled, charging his own energy, purple strands of power leaping around his skin as his eyes darkened into a deep purple.

He cocked his fist and launched the punch.

* * *

"Fury, we've got a situation. Somebody is getting in Electro's face, and Electro looks like he's about to snap - damn," the Black Widow cursed suddenly, "Electro is charging up. He's about to kill that man."

On the line, Fury cursed.

"Hawkeye, take the shot. Try to short-circuit Electro." Fury ordered.

"Yes, sir." Hawkeye acknowledged, notching an arrow that he knew instinctively would hit Electro square in the back of his neck.

That was when Electro flew out the front of the building, smashing into a police van violently. The van crumpled under the force of the impact and it was clear Electro was down for the count as policemen swarmed him, holding Electro at gunpoint from dozens of men while others went to secure the hostages.

"Holy shit," Hawkeye breathed.

"Fury?" Widow radioed, "We've got a powered individual."

"I can see that," Fury barked, "Get him to the Helicarrier, now!"

"And if he doesn't want to come?" Hawkeye asked, "We don't have the manpower to force him to do anything."

"Then don't tell him that."

* * *

"Up you go," Harry said, pulling a woman up from the ground where she had been cowering.

"Thank you…" She trailed off.

"Harry."

"Thank you, Harry. Electro has been a menace for years in New York - hopefully he gets locked up somewhere good this time." The woman smiled.

"You're welcome, ma'am," Harry started, then frowned, "He really shouldn't have touched my food."

The woman's eyes widened and she pulled out her purse.

"Oh! Goodness, would you like me to buy you another burger? It's the least I could do."

Harry chuckled.

"No, absolutely not - I didn't mean it like that. Besides," he said, looking towards the kitchen, "I don't really think anyone would be there to make me one."

Harry and the woman exchanged goodbyes and another round of "Thank you, you're welcome" before the woman walked out of the cafe.

When Harry turned around to exit himself, He found himself staring down the barrel of a gun and a bow and arrow, of all things.

Thinking quickly, Harry ducked into a roll, unholstering the Elder Wand. In the blink of an eye, the gun became a viper that tried to attack the redhead holding it and the bow became a pile of wet spaghetti noodles. Harry popped up behind an overturned table before casting a shield charm in front of him while charging the purple energy in his free hand.

The redhead flung the viper away where it disappeared in a puff of smoke and the man just stared down at what once was his bow.

"Stop!" The woman shouted, "We are not here to fight you."

Harry raised an eyebrow and scoffed.

"Seriously? You could've fooled me."

"We are here on behalf of S.H.I.E.L.D., the head would like to chat with you."

"What is shield? I can practically hear the anagram."

The man smiled even as the woman started to explain.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. is the Strategic Homeland -" The Black Widow was cut off by her partner.

"Blah, blah, blah. We're the guys who keep track of all the weird shit that happens in the world. And if you ask me, someone came up with the name shield before that stupid acronym was created."

The man interrupted and stepped forward, extending his hand to Harry.

"My name is Hawkeye, and my partner over there is the Black Widow. And you don't have to come with us, but the guy in charge is a bit of a hardass and wouldn't leave you alone for the next decade if you don't." Hawkeye shrugged, "I'm sorry, man."

Harry sighed. Somewhere up there, someone was laughing at him.

* * *

It turned out the somewhere up there was a massive, flying aircraft carrier. And the someone was a tall, black man with an eyepatch.

"Mr. Harry, I have a few questions for you if you don't mind answering them." The man who introduced himself as Nick Fury started.

Harry yawned, trying to cover the action with his arm.

"I'm really sorry to do this, but could it possibly wait until the morning? I've had a hell of a last twenty four hours." Harry explained.

Director Fury nodded.

"England, right?"

"My accent give it away?"

"Widow, please show Harry to an open room for the night."

* * *

Harry could practically feel the cameras. He was half tempted to send out a surge of magic just to fry everything in that room but refrained, figuring that he wasn't going to do anything that would merit the destruction of the eyes on him.

He knew that somebody would be watching him, noting his every move until the morning came when he would most likely be escorted to a room with Nick Fury.

Nick Fury was like seeing Moody live on through a slightly scarier, more intimidating black bloke.

Chuckling to himself at his comparison, Harry turned and hit the plain grey bed like a sack of bricks.

* * *

Outwardly, Nick Fury was a cold mask of indifference.

Inwardly, though, Nick Fury was groaning. Harry Potter, as he had introduced himself, clearly did not trust him or his crew. Fury didn't blame him, of course - he had attempted to bring him in at gunpoint.

But Harry's levels of distrust were damn near bordering on paranoia.

Fury sighed.

"Mr. Potter, you have to understand where I am coming from. What you did yesterday is not possible. You turned one of my best agent's bow into his goddamn dinner and his partner's gun into a snake. And that's not even counting that you punched a man so hard he crumpled an armored van."

Potter narrowed his eyes.

"I had a very long day."

"Want to tell us about that? We found a hell of a war zone over in the UK."

For the briefest second, Harry's eyes flashed with a despair that almost - almost - tugged at Fury's heart.

Harry looked down and was silent for a moment before he let out a shuddering breath and looked back up at Fury, eyes glistening.

"I lost my people yesterday, sir."

"Cities started appearing yesterday, Potter, out of nowhere. Who exactly were your people?"

Harry's eyes widened dramatically.

"What?! Where?"

"All over Europe, Asia, even parts of North America. But none of them were burned. Not like the UK."

"Did any muggle cities burn?" Harry quickly demanded before slapping his hand over his forehead.

"Mind telling me what a muggle is?"

"You first."

"No. No muggle cities burned - that is, if muggle is a word for us regular people."

"Regular people don't have flying boats," Harry countered, "But yes, muggle is a word used by my people to describe those without powers."

"What exactly were your people?"

Harry seemed to be mulling over exactly what he wanted to tell Fury. He was silent for a moment before he seemingly decided.

"Well, I guess the Statute isn't in effect anymore. We called ourselves wizards."

"Seriously? Wizards?" Hawkeye cut in, "That seems a little fanciful."

"We use magic and ride brooms. I think it's a pretty apt description."

Fury changed subjects.

"Did you have anything to do with the burning?"

Harry nodded.

"Yeah, that was me. I wanted to eradicate the invaders."

"Who invaded you?"

"Thanos."

There was a long pause as Fury looked at the three agents assembled, searching for any recognition in their faces. Hawkeye summed it up the best, though.

"Who?"

* * *

"Thanos," Harry explained, "He came with two powerful stones and wiped out my civilization."

"Why did he target your people? And how did you survive?"

"He thought that the wizards had the Time Stone, supposedly guarded by the Sorcerer Supreme."

"He thought you were this Sorcerer?"

"That's what he said, at least. I've never seen the Time Stone and my experiences with time travel have been highly limited."

"You have the means to time travel?" Fury demanded.

"Not anymore. All the turners were destroyed many years ago," Harry lied, desperately trying to keep a blank face as he thought about the Time Turner stored in Gringotts that he had procured.

Fury nodded, seemingly accepting Harry's lie before hitting Harry with a statement that seemed to come from nowhere.

"Okay, Mr. Potter. I don't know much about you, and I want to keep an eye on you. I think that you could be a powerful force of protection for Earth."

Fury took a breath.

"I would like to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative."

* * *

Thanos grunted as his sword was sent flying out his hands by a powerful telepathic attack.

"Leave this place, Titan! The Mind Stone is under my protection."

Thanos advanced slowly towards the woman clad in green armor.

"Moondragon. I have no quarrel with you. Release the stone to me and I will leave this place in peace."

"Any who seek to take the Mind Stone have a quarrel with me," she said, blasting Thanos with another telepathic attack.

"So be it," Thanos allowed, and turned around.

The blade of Corvus Glaive ripped through Moondragon's chest, killing her where she stood. A few moments later, Corvus walked to his master's side.

"The Mind Stone, lord." He said, presenting the stone while dropping to a knee.

The stone hummed in Thanos' hand.

* * *

"Allow me to make sure I have understood the terms of this deal. I take this scepter," He spat the word out in distaste, much preferring the subtlety daggers allowed, "And retrieve two pebbles and in return you will grant me an army and dominion over Midgard?"

"If you succeed."

Loki grinned.

"Then you have a deal, Titan."

He never even noticed Thanos subtly manipulating the mind stone.

* * *

**AN: 907 unique visits to this story. That's insane to me! Thanks, everyone, for reading. **


	4. Chapter 4 (June 16)

**Revised as of 6/16/19**

* * *

_Fury took a breath._

"_I would like to talk to you about the Avengers Initiative."_

* * *

'_Well, that was quick,' _Harry thought, bemused. He had known that this "Avengers" thing was coming, but he certainly wasn't expecting it to come this quickly. And he wasn't going to let Fury gain any control over him, regardless of whether or not that's what had happened in the future anyway. Or, his old future, since this one had likely been altered beyond recognition anyway.

Bloody hell, time travel sucked.

Not wanting to commit too easily, however, Harry just raised an eyebrow, prompting Fury to continue.

"I am gathering a group of remarkable people," Fury started, "To protect the world from not only itself and the people on it, but everything up _there_." Fury pointed to the ceiling.

"You don't know me. For all you know I could be worse than the chap I knocked through the wall," Harry countered, crossing his arms, "And I know _nothing _about you."

"I am Nick Fury. I run S.H.I.E.L.D. and attempt to keep the things that go bump in the night away from everyone else on the streets." He smirked, "And that's all I can tell you without a contract with your name on it."

"I'm not signing anything. What are the Avengers?"

"I already said, they are _a group of remarkable people that will protect _-"

"No, that's not what I want to know. Are they your personal attack team? Do they belong to S.H.I.E.L.D.? _Why _are you gathering the Avengers? And I _will _know if you lie," Harry finished, ready to use some passive Legilimency to tell if Fury was lying to him.

"Twenty years ago, the Earth was damn near invaded by aliens. Bunch of bastards. We had _one person _to stand between them and us, and even then it was by the skin of our teeth that she prevented the worst."

"Where is this person now?" Harry fired back, "And where the _bloody hell _was she when _my people were slaughtered?_" He demanded, gripping the underside of the table tightly.

"Off planet. And even if she _was _here, what makes you think that she would have even _known? _Not a damn person knew about the attack until it was already over and by then there was _nothing we could do_."

"I can't stop anything on that scale. I tried, remember?" He spat, looking at the ground.

"Not _alone_, you can't. Mr. Potter," Fury responded, and Harry met his eyes, retort stopped in his throat as he looked at the fire burning behind not only Fury's eyes, but the Black Widow and Hawkeye's as well.

"If you can honestly tell me that you would stand by and let others take the burden of saviors then you may walk out of this room right now and you will never hear from S.H.I.E.L.D. again."

Fury took out a small bundle of papers.

"But if that's not true… Welcome to the Avengers."

Harry held Fury's intense gaze for a few moments, the tension palpable in the air before he sighed.

Noticing the small smiles on all of the faces in the room, Harry started to read the document. Fury hadn't been lying - the document established that the Avengers were a separate entity from S.H.I.E.L.D.. The Avengers would be required to _listen _to Fury, but Fury didn't hold power over them. Widow and Hawkeye were a gray area, but Harry could work with that."

With a flourish that was entirely for effect, Harry summoned a pen into his hand and his signature flowed neatly across the line before he looked up.

"What now?"

* * *

Fury smiled, a chilling contortion of his face that would send shivers down most people's spines.

But he was genuinely pleased with Mr. Potter's signing. Happy, even.

"_Now_," He answered, thinking for a moment "It is your turn. My intel on you has been _lacking_. You have no records after the age of eleven - did you know that, Mr. Potter? You were effectively dead to the world before you showed up here."

He narrowed his eye at Harry, looking for any tell that would clue him into a lie or half-truth.

Sure enough, Harry's eyes shifted a little to the side. Harry was clearly deciding what he wanted to tell Fury.

If it was a lie, he would know.

"I guess there is nothing to hide, anymore," Harry started, voice cracking the tiniest bit.

"At age eleven, I started attending Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. There was a terrorist. His name was Tom Riddle, but he went by Voldemort. He tore the community apart and started a civil war that lasted until the end of my schooling seven years later."

Fury raised an eyebrow.

"It happened to stop the same year you graduated?"

"Yes. I stopped it."

And that was that. Harry was blunt; there was a civil war, so he stopped it. Simple.

Fury knew he made the right call on bringing him in.

Motioning for him to continue, he leaned back in his chair.

"I married a few years after my schooling. Had three children." His breath caught and his eyes started to water.

Fury had to strain his ears to catch Harry's last sentence.

"You know the rest."

* * *

Harry let himself coast through the rest of the meeting, his body on autopilot. He agreed to have S.H.I.E.L.D. provide him a flat in New York City and the next thing he knew, the Black Widow was leading him away.

"You had a family." It wasn't a question, but the way the Black Widow said it made Harry think she wanted to know more about it. He nodded, looking forward and letting his eyes continue to water.

"Three kids. Al, Lily, and James."

"What were they like?" Her tone was soft,

"Maniacs, pranksters, and nutcases," Harry responded, letting a sad smile grace his features, "I loved them more than I've ever loved anything before. I would've moved heaven and earth for them without thinking twice."

There was a long pause as the two just rode in silence before Black Widow broke it again.

"And your wife?"

"Ginny," He breathed, the name almost holding reverence in his mouth.

"She was a spitfire. Most amazing woman I've ever met. Loved everyone with all that she had but wouldn't hesitate to lay a beatdown on anyone who caught her ire. She was my world and my kids were the sun."

"What about your family?"

Harry frowned slightly, but answered the question anyway.

"My parents were killed by Voldemort when I was one. I was sent to my aunt and uncle, but they weren't fond of what magic meant for their family. I was beaten, starved, locked in a cupboard for a decade of my life."

To her credit, the Black Widow picked up on what he implied and didn't press for details.

"I'm sorry," Was all she said.

"Don't be," Harry brushed the apology aside, "I made my peace with them years ago."

They rode in silence for a while, just admiring the scenery as the S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicle drove them through the bustling streets of the city on the way to Harry's new flat.

"I was three," Widow started as the pair approached a sleek black van, "When I was kidnapped by the KGB. They trained me for years to become the pinnacle assassin and when they thought I was good enough, they dumped an imperfect Super Soldier Serum down my throat."

Harry paused in his entry, unsure how to respond. Widow, though, saved him from trying by continuing.

"I've done horrible things for horrible people. S.H.I.E.L.D. eventually tracked me down; sent Clint to kill me. He made a different call - showed me what the _good guys _were like."

She took a breath, and looked out the window.

"When Fury approached me with the Avengers Initiative, it became my chance to turn my wrongs into rights; to atone."

She gave a mirthless laugh and continued.

"I guess on some level, I'm trying to get revenge on myself, not that that makes sense at all…"

Widow gathered her thoughts for a few moments before folding her hands on her lap.

The point is, I guess, I get it. And Harry?" She asked, looking over at him.

"You're not alone. Not here."

They rode in silence until they got to the building. Harry was handed a key and the duo stepped into an elevator.

"Widow-"

"Natasha."

"Natasha," Harry corrected himself, "What is Clint, to you?"

She thought for a long moment before she responded, turning dark eyes to Harry.

"An anchor. The most down-to-earth man I've met in this business. The first person on this planet I ever considered as a friend."

She took a deep breath and looked at Harry.

"This is confidential."

"I've no one to tell."

Silence, again, before she continued.

"Clint caught me after a mission. I had been given two targets; a man and a woman. They were regular, unassuming people but even though I didn't see the point in their deaths I went through with it because those were my orders."

I didn't see him for a while - he's a sniper, after all - but I escaped the house quickly, weaving through arrows. I thought it was primitive; _bow and arrow_, of all things, but Clint fired with extreme accuracy. He hit me, eventually, in the knee. Brought me down and came to execute me."

"Before he did, though, he asked me why I had murdered my family."

She looked at Harry, and he caught a brief glimpse of immense pain in her eyes.

"I broke. Clint brought me back to S.H.I.E.L.D., stood by me as their doctors and psychologists tried to erase two decades' worth of programming from my brain. And, more importantly,"

Her gaze became steely for a moment.

"He stood for me when they failed; wanted to kill me."

The doors opened, halting any further conversation and the two walked to Harry's apartment door before bidding each other farewell. Opening the door, Harry stepped in and closed the door before taking three steps into the living room, removing a tattered photograph from his moleskin pouch.

He sat down on the ground and wept, the photograph dropping from his hand and floating gently to the floor.

And as he sobbed, the faces of Hermione, Ron, Hagrid, Luna, Ginny, Neville, and George smiled back at him.

Harry wept openly, the events of the last days crashing into him with the force of a freight train, and between sobs he started choking out the names of his closest friends.

As he moaned Ginny's name, his stomach turned once, twice, then three times.

The shade of Ginny Weasley joined her beloved on the ground, offering silent support.

* * *

Harry woke up the next morning to a knock on his door. Rolling over on the carpet, he slowly stood up, shaking his head to get rid of some of the grogginess.

"Coming!" He shouted in the direction of the door before he slipped into the bathroom. Quickly freshening up, he made his way to the front door.

Opening it, he was met with Hawkeye, who smiled at Harry.

"Big guy wants to see you. Triskelion." Hawkeye explained, holding open the door for Harry to walk through."

Hawkeye took a second to take in Harry's disheveled appearance and frowned.

"What happened? You look horrible."

Harry chuckled.

"Thanks. I didn't get much sleep last night."

Hawkeye sobered up and met Harry's eyes before nodding.

"Ah. First chance at rest is always the hardest."

Harry nodded back to the marksman and ran a hand through his hair.

"I had a good conversation, though."

"Conversation," Hawkeye responded, confused, "Who'd you talk to?"

"My wife."

Hawkeye paused a long moment, trying to come up with a response to that, eventually settling on the simple.

"You can _do that?_"

"Apparently."

"_Apparently?_ You didn't _know _you could do that?"

"Not without the Stone; I've never done that without it."

A longer pause ensued as Hawkeye stared at Harry, trying to find any indication of a joke or a lie. Finding nothing, he sighed.

"...Right. Either you're pulling my leg or we've got a lot to talk about. Either way, it's best not to keep Fury waiting for long. Quinjet is parked up top."

Looking up, Harry did a double take when he spotted the small jet parked on the complex roof.

"I've got a few questions."

* * *

The flight to the _Triskelion _was fairly quick. Upon arrival, the jet touched down and Harry stepped out to be met with an incredible building. The main building was a tall cylinder with a ring of windows near the top. Connected to the bottom was a large, flat building that looked akin to a warehouse. The whole facility stood on the bank of a river and was sleek. Harry was extremely impressed.

"Just follow me," Hawkeye called from a few yards ahead of Harry after letting him take in the sights.

"Big guy should be on the top floor."

* * *

The two walked into the compound and through a large entrance area towards a set of elevators. Pressing a button, the pair waited for the doors to open before stepping inside. Hawkeye swiped a card on a sensor and the elevator started to ascend slowly.

Turning to Hawkeye, Harry opened his mouth.

"Why are you on the Avengers?"

Hawkeye turned towards Harry, raising an eyebrow.

"What, you don't think I'm up to snuff?" He replied, chuckling.

Harry shook his head, smiling, and elaborated.

"No, I meant why do you fight? Why join the Avengers at all?"

Clint let out a breath and looked upwards.

"I'm a regular guy, for the most part," He started, "No serum or powers on my end. Just really good with a bow."

He looked back at Harry and caught his eye before continuing.

"I fight for the other regular guys. I've got the ability to fight against powerful things, should the need arise. The way I see it, it's my duty to fight for them."

He smirked at Harry.

"Plus, my boss told me to."

The two shared a laugh before fading into a content silence. Eventually, Hawkeye broke the silence by turning again to Harry.

"What about you? Why are you here?"

Harry tightened his fist, letting sparks dance around his hand.

"Revenge."

In response, Hawkeye raised an eyebrow.

"If you just wanted revenge, you could've gone after Thanos yourself. No need to join the Avengers."

Harry sighed. Hawkeye had a point - he would find Thanos faster by himself than with the Avengers.

"A friend called it a _saving people thing_. I prefer to refer to it as my ability to draw trouble wherever I am coupled with my inability to not try and stop it once it's there."

Harry shrugged, and flipped his palms upward.

"The _Avengers _thing sounds like a way for me to help other people."

Harry smirked before deciding to hit Hawkeye with a stinger before exiting the elevator.

"Plus, my future self told me to."

Hawkeye stood in the elevator for a moment to process what Harry said before following him out.

"_So _many questions."

* * *

"Mr. Potter," Fury began once the pair walked into the room, "Thank you for coming."

Harry nodded in lieu of a response before asking Fury why he wanted him here.

"I called you here to get an idea of what exactly you can do," Fury replied.

"You're an unknown to us. The only things we know about you are that you can punch a man through a wall and turn weapons into various things."

"And you can apparently _summon the dead _and _time travel_," Hawkeye cut in, and Fury's eyebrow shot upwards.

"Time travel? I seem to recall you claiming that you couldn't do that anymore." Fury accused, and Harry raised his hands in defense.

"I wasn't lying. I have no means to time travel. But somehow, in the future I get my hands on the ability again. I don't know how, but I know some of the circumstances and they aren't pretty."

"Care to elaborate?"

Harry went silent. He knew Thanos won - at least in the other timeline. That would mean he decimated Earth and most everyone on it. But telling Fury any of this would mean he would prepare for an event that would likely not happen, anymore. The timeline was probably so drastically changed just by Harry showing up that telling Fury what he suspected would just lead to more problems.

"No, but only because that is the nature of time travel. Whatever happened has most likely been changed already - trust me, it's finicky."

"I'll accept that. Moving on, you can summon the dead?"

"Apparently. I used to need an artifact for it. One of a kind. And anyone I summon is in pain while they are back in this realm, so I don't see myself doing it unless _absolutely _required."

"What else can you do?"

Harry shrugged.

"Lots of things. I am a wizard - I have a spell for most everything. I spent most of my adulthood as an Auror. I have extreme combat training because of it."

"What is an Auror?"

"More or less the magical equivalent of the police."

"Is that where your superhuman strength comes from?"

Harry shook his head, sighing.

"No. I don't fully understand that, yet. I channeled an extreme amount of power from the Power Stone and I think I absorbed a good deal of energy from it. I started to be able to do all the purple stuff shortly afterwards."

Fury nodded, brows furrowed as he considered what Harry told him.

"Okay," He eventually settled on, "Would you be so kind as to spar with Hawkeye to give me a demonstration of exactly what you can do?"

Harry blinked, shocked at the request.

"Um, sure? I'm not going to hit him with my hard stuff, though."

"I would hope not," Fury replied, "Training room is downstairs."

With that, Fury stood up and started walking, prompting Harry and Hawkeye to follow.

* * *

When Hawkeye walked into the large room he stood in, the archer didn't waste a second. He fired an arrow straight at Harry before diving behind one of the many concrete barriers placed sporadically throughout the room.

Waving his wand, the arrow became a tissue and floated harmlessly to the ground.

Another wave of the wand and a tiger sprang up from the tissue and charged the barrier Hawkeye was behind.

With a startled shout, Hawkeye rolled from behind cover and pelted the tiger with arrows, dispelling the transfiguration and reverting the beast back into an arrow.

Noticing a blur of movement in his peripheral, Harry snapped around but saw nothing. When he turned back to where Hawkeye was, he barely had time to snap a shield into place before an arrow crashed into it. The shield caught the arrow not an inch from Harry's head and he was able to take a moment to notice the tip was extremely dull.

That's when the arrow exploded into a cloud of smoke.

Coughing, Harry waved the smoke out of his eyes. Cursing silently, he noticed Hawkeye had used that distraction to cut the lights completely.

Thinking quickly, Harry cast a _homenum revelio _in the general direction of Hawkeye. His body lit up in Harry's vision, and he raised his wand to fire an area of effect stunner.

He wasn't expecting to be brought to his knees by a taser, however.

Gritting his teeth, he painfully turned his head towards where he could barely make out the Black Widow standing next to him, wrist gauntlets discharging electricity into him. She gave no indication of stopping so Harry ignored the pain as best he could to summon as little of his energy as he could before violently _pushing _it out of his body, sending the Black Widow flying back a few feet.

Harry took a moment to allow himself to be surprised at her entrance. He hadn't even known that she was here, let alone that she would be fighting him too.

Looking at where he had launched her, he saw a flash of green eyes for the briefest moment before it, and she, disappeared.

Harry knew that the two agents most likely had a way to see through the darkness so he disillusioned himself before casting a host of spells to silence him totally and another to mask his scent.

He didn't know if either one of them happened to have a crazy accurate nose - he'd seen weirder things.

He was surprised, then, when an arrow nailed his chest at the same time a vicious blow hit the back of his knee.

Grunting in pain and clutching his chest as he went down, Harry rolled before jumping to his feet and casting a levitation charm on himself much like he had done during the fight against Storm.

Banishing downwards, he flew into the air in the spacious room and took a moment to catch his breath, narrowly dodging another arrow and something metallic flying at him.

The agents could obviously still see him, despite him being invisible to the naked eye. Harry quickly ran down a list of ways he knew he could be tracked but came up short. He had no idea how the two were tracking him.

He groaned. His invisibility cloak would hide him from any method of detection, but there was no way he had time to rummage through his moleskin to retrieve it. Even a targeted _accio _would take a few precious moments.

Needless to say, he was a little shocked when he felt the silky fabric of the cloak suddenly drape down his shoulders. Quickly flipping the hood up, Harry landed to prevent the two agents from seeing his feet.

He'd really have to figure out a way around that.

The lights snapped back on, and Harry saw both agents discarding a set of metal goggles before whipping around trying to locate him.

Strolling behind Black Widow, Harry sent a stunner into her back and chuckled at Hawkeye's reaction.

The chuckle died though as Harry rubbed the welt that was forming on his chest, and Harry walked over to Hawkeye before slapping him square across the face.

A second later and he was slumped in a similar position to his teammate.

Harry felt the cloak phase from his body as he reached down to enervate both Avengers. With groans, both agents slowly sat up, rubbing their heads.

Hawkeye stood up first.

"Did… did you bitch slap me?"

Harry sent him a mock glare and gestured to his chest.

"An eye for an eye - your arrow left a nasty welt. I just returned the favor." Harry grinned, nodding to the bruise that was forming on Hawkeye's cheek.

Hawkeye stood there for a second before a lopsided grin grew on his face and he stuck out his hand.

"Clint Barton. I think we're going to get along splendidly."

Harry reached out, grasping the offered hand.

"Harry Potter - though you already knew that - and I agree. How did you see me when the lights went off, by the way? I was invisible."

"You were invisible?" Hawkeye returned, slightly shocked at the admission. In response, Harry disillusioned himself again and he faded from view with a shimmer.

Hawkeye reached out, poking Harry's chest.

"That's _incredible_!" He breathed, "You're completely invisible! Our best tech can't quite do that. Almost, but not quite."

Harry smiled, dropping the spell before frowning.

"You still saw me through it, though."

In response, the Black Widow handed Harry one of the metal goggles he had seen the two discard earlier in the fight.

"Try these on," She said in lieu of an explanation, "Hill, cut the lights!"

Harry slipped the goggles on and the lights were cut. Looking around, he let out a slight breath in amazement as he saw the forms of Hawkeye and the Black Widow lit up in various warm colors. The lights snapped back on and Harry removed the goggles.

"What are these things?" He asked, looking at the contraption in awe.

"Thermal goggles," the Black Widow responded, taking them back from Harry, "They respond to heat. Body heat, in our case. My question is how you vanished from even that?" She finished, tilting her head a little bit to the side.

Harry grinned, willing the cloak to appear over his shoulders.

"I have a better way to vanish," He replied, flipping the hood up.

"An invisibility cloak. Our techies are going to freak out," Clint laughed once Harry reappeared.

Harry nodded, "Here, try it out for yourself."

Curiously, Harry attempted to summon the cloak to his hand instead of over him. To his delight, the cloak responded accordingly, appearing clutched in his hand which he held out to Hawkeye.

Slowly, Clint draped the cloak over himself and pulled the hood up.

"Nat," Clint asked, "Can I get a mirror quick?"

"What makes you think I have a mirror?"

"Intuition."

Natasha rolled her eyes before producing a small hand mirror from some unseen compartment on her belt and held it up in Clint's direction.

"_Wow_. You wouldn't happen to have another one of these lying around, would you? I could definitely use one of these."

Harry shook his head.

"That's a family heirloom and it's pretty one-of-a-kind. If I ever figure out runes, though, I could probably rig you up something to disillusion you. Besides, one that bow comes out the jig is up. Only things _under _the cloak are invisible."

"Slightly worse, but I would still take it."

* * *

Fury rubbed his temple.

"For the record, is there anything you _can't _do?" He looked across the table at Harry who - to Fury's surprise - started nodding almost instantly.

"I don't know," Harry replied, honestly before lighting his hands up with purple electricity.

"I certainly couldn't do _this_ before yesterday," He continued, gesturing with his hands at the energy coating them, "So I don't know what it can do or if it is a finite source of power. I'm not a genius in any sense of the word."

"I guess, at the end of the day I'm still as human as the rest of us. I can just do a little bit more."

"You can become _invisible_." Clint reminded him.

Harry shrugged.

"I can still be killed. It's just harder to do than some people would prefer."

Fury nodded in understanding, and Harry just _knew _that all of that information had just been recorded to a file somewhere.

"You're from England, correct?" Fury changed the subject.

"Right," Harry confirmed, "I came to the Colonies on my own advice. Told myself I'd end up here anyway so I'd may as well just go."

"_The Colonies_," Clint scoffed, "Do you really call America the Colonies?"

"Force of habit," Harry responded, before Fury cut in.

"You've already managed to have a run-in with the X-Men within your first week here. How did that happen?"

"I was flying to New York and one of the X-Men - Storm - tried to strike me down."

"Just like that?" Fury pressed, "No warning?"

Harry shook his head in the negative.

"No warning at all."

Fury frowned.

"Do you have mental shielding?" He asked suddenly, and Harry raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, but Charles said that they didn't matter to a telepath. He could still read my thoughts."

"But could he talk to you?" Fury demanded, "Charles isn't the only telepath on the team. Jean Grey is another. Did you _ever _get telepathic communication while you were there?"

Harry thought for a long second before he sighed.

"No."

"Then you probably received a warning -" Fury started.

"And when you didn't respond..." Hawkeye notched an arrow and pointed it straight at Harry's skull before disarming the bow and setting it down.

Harry sighed again, running a hand through his hair.

"Alright, I suppose that is fair, then. And I guess it doesn't matter - we left each other on good terms."

Harry thought for a moment.

"I promised them that I would help if they should ever need it. Will being in the Avengers interfere with that?"

Fury smirked.

"Official S.H.I.E.L.D. policy is eyes on, hands off. Official _Avenger _policy has to be decided by the Avengers."

Harry smirked back, catching on to Fury's meaning.

"Thank you. Who are the other Avengers? Besides Clint and Natasha, I mean."

"As of now? Just you three. I have a few other people in mind, but nothing concrete yet."

Fury took a breath and he looked slightly annoyed before he continued.

"We do, however, have a _consultant._"

"Who?"

* * *

In Malibu, Tony Stark sat watching the clip of Electro - someone he hadn't even known existed until yesterday - flying from the cafe. At the very end, the camera was able to snag a glimpse of a man standing in the cafe, fist ablaze with purple fire.

"Jarvis, blow up that image." Tony commanded his A.I., pausing the video on one of the last frames.

The image cropped and expanded the body of the man in question, but the image was so pixelated that it was hard to make any distinguishing features out.

Tony grimaced, trying to make the image a little sharper and failing.

"Jarvis, is there anything you can do to make this better?"

"One second, sir," His A.I. responded, and Tony waited until the image snapped into _slightly _better focus.

"That is all I can do to this, sir. The video was most likely filmed from a fair distance on a fairly poor camera."

Tony sighed. He had been trying to find any way to identify the man in the photo. Since Fury approached him nearly four years ago he had made it a point to figure out who the other "Avengers" would be. S.H.I.E.L.D. had been trying to locate Captain America for years, and by the looks of their secret files, they were close to zeroing in on a location. The name _Bruce Banner _surprised him a little - he had known about his research prowess but didn't think he had anything beyond that until Fury's personal files had revealed his anger management issues.

The two agents codenamed Hawkeye and Black Widow were the only two full members besides a mention of a potential _Thor_.

Ironman wasn't alone anymore. He knew that, on some level - even Rhodey had the War Machine armor now, and he had grown up hearing of the _great Captain Rodgers_, but he had never really, truly considered that he wouldn't be _the _hero.

There were others. Thor landing in the middle of the desert, Banner and his Hulk… Tony wanted to know exactly who was out there.

So he researched. He saw mention of a "Danvers" project in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s files. The now-retired Ant-Man had surely passed his technology onto another now (and if he hadn't Tony would _love _to get his hands on some of that). Even a whole team of established superheroes that were only referred to as the X-Men existed, though that was all Tony could figure out.

And now this weird little man shows up out of nowhere and throws a single punch that knocks a decently powerful villain through a wall and out cold.

"Jarvis, how come I haven't upgraded my Mark VI yet?"

"You've already started that project, sir."

"Oh, right. Better finish that, then."

* * *

Harry and Clint stood again in the elevator that would take them back to the Quinjet.

"Harry," Clint started, "You said you had a _good conversation_. What did she say?"

* * *

Harry wept until his eyes shed no more tears. Looking up, however, he was able to find more tears as he met the eyes of Ginny.

"Love, it's okay. I am okay," She consoled, and Harry - acting on instinct - went to hug his deceased wife, choking back another sob as he phased through her.

"Harry, you've got to listen to me."

Harry continued his attempts to grasp his wife. He knew, logically, that they would all fail - she was an apparition, now. But still, he couldn't accept that.

"Harry."

No response as the man in question was stuck in his own grief.

"_Harry_."

"**Harry!**" Ginny screamed finally, stunning Harry out of his stupor.

"Don't make me drag Hermione down here. She will rip you a new one."

Latching on to the first bit, Harry's eyes shot upwards.

"Hermione… You all are together, now?"

Ginny's glare softened and she nodded.

"Yes, love, we are. _All _of us. Me, my family, Ron, Hermione… _Sirius_, your parents - we're all together now. And we're all _proud _of you."

"How can you be proud -" Harry started but was cut off by Ginny.

"_How can we be proud?!_" Ginny repeated, incredulously "Harry. You could not have known about Thanos."

"If I had gotten to the Power Stone sooner I could have stopped him."

"You didn't know that. You absorbing some of that stone was utterly unexpected. It easily could have killed you if it weren't for the Elder Wand."

Seeing that Harry didn't have a retort, Ginny pressed further.

"Harry, Thanos wiped out the wizards in one fell swoop. From what the people who were Watching said, he wiped out _all _the wizards. _Except you_."

She took a breath and winced in pain before continuing.

"I'm not allowed to tell you what to do, love. Death won't let me. But you are all the magical world has left. The sum of all the knowledge our culture has ever discovered and documented now is rightfully yours."

"If magic survives, it will be because you survive. You potentially could amass more knowledge of our craft than anyone who has ever lived; you could be the most powerful wizard to ever live." She looked Harry dead in the eyes and Harry caught a glimpse of the fire that burned so hotly whenever Ginny got stirred up.

"If that isn't enough to kill a Titan I'm not sure what would be."

* * *

Harry just smiled back at Clint.

"She told me that I wouldn't be able to see Thanos coming if I keep looking backwards."

"Wise woman," Clint nodded sagely.

"You could say that," Harry responded.

Both Clint and Harry settled into the Quinjet as they waited for the pilot to begin the flight back to New York City.

"Thanks for coming with me," Harry said, "You didn't have to do that."

"It's nothing," Clint waved him off, "Besides, Fury wants me there for a while to _spy,_" Clint coughed the word in a joking manner, "Sorry - _oversee_ \- Stark's new tower. Make sure the thing isn't rigged to launch or anything."

Harry laughed.

"No, I'm serious. From what I've seen of Stark, I absolutely would not put it past him."

"He's that good?"

"He's that crazy."

"We're working with him?" Harry raised his eyebrows and scoffed.

"I guess so," Clint shrugged back.

"This'll be fun."

* * *

The flat Harry ended up with was a modest two-bedroom near the center of New York City. From his window he could see bustling streets and storefronts but not much else - it seemed that the Avenger suite wasn't too extravagant.

Harry didn't mind, though, and he set to work improving the space.

In the living room, liberal usage of space expansion charms ensured that Harry wouldn't be wanting for room anytime soon, and he cast silencing charms on the walls, ceiling and floor to prevent any noise other than if he chose to open his window. He cast a host of charms including muggle-repelling and notice-me-nots to ensure muggles didn't think twice about the extremely impossible space he was living inside unless they managed to enter, something Harry was keen to prevent with the repelling charms. Finally, Harry gingerly picked up the battered photo of his friends from the floor and enlarged it before sticking it to the wall over the fireplace.

Moving to the connected kitchen, Harry didn't change much besides slightly increasing the size of both the room itself and the cabinets and pantry inside it before enlarging a window to give him a better view of… well, still the street, but more of it.

The master bedroom was expanded significantly and the bed was transfigured and molded into something far more comfortable than what the complex provided. The bathroom was likewise expanded and Harry cast a nifty little charm to keep the floor heated to a warm temperature.

The spare bedroom was changed the most. It was expanded to the size of a small gym; the walls were transfigured to stone and Harry set to work on a wardstone he had nabbed from a vault deep within Gringotts during his little raid. The room quickly became extremely fortified once Harry pushed magic into the wardstone, activating both the runes already on it and the extra ones Harry had added. He had figured out the basics and a little more of warding during his time after Hogwarts and Harry didn't need much more than sheer power for his purposes.

Harry sighed as he thought about the room's intended purpose.

He was the last of the wizards - the sole survivor of magic and he would be _damned _if it died with him. But he refused to just carry magic through his lineage. He had married Ginny and while he knew she would want him to find happiness in another, it would be a disgrace to both her memory and his vows if he jumped into another relationship, even if it were just to ensure magic lived on for generations to come.

The room was for practicing magic. It was for training himself to become the greatest wizard that had ever and would ever live.

It was for _rituals_.

Any house worth their salt in the Wizarding World had an enchantment on it that, in the case of an emergency that threatened the house itself, would send any and all valuables to Gringotts.

And since Thanos and Harry had quite effectively destroyed Wizarding Britain…

Well, Harry held within his bag family grimoires that had been thought lost for _centuries_. Ginny had been right - nearly the entirety of the knowledge of wizards was within Harry's grasp, knowledge that had never before been amassed in their history.

And within those tomes were some devastating spells, and some incredible rituals.

Harry shuddered at the thought, but he knew that it was worth it. Rituals had gained a bad reputation because of the Ministry but most of that was bogus to deter any new would-be-Voldemorts from seeking his path to power. And though Harry was _technically _seeking Voldemort-levels of power, he was seeking it for a worthy cause, and he refused to give up even a modicum of his humanity in pursuit of it.

Besides, Ginny had basically given him the green light to proceed.

And so it was with steely determination that Harry set to do something he had hardly done before in his life:

Study.

* * *

**I feel it is time to respond to a few issues people are pointing out to me through PM and review. I'll address them in the order corresponding from most to least brought up.**

**1) This story does not necessarily follow MCU canon. **_Right. This story is _not _canon to the MCU and some events have been changed and the timeline as a whole shifted around a little bit. If you would like a canon retelling, Marvel is releasing a full set of every movie released to this point. I urge you to buy it. When I change things, I change them for a reason (generally to tell the story that I want to tell)._

**2) Nothing makes sense.** _This is one I got a lot, and I am hoping to fix some issues with the revised version of this chapter. I will remark, however, that while I received no less than 30 PMs addressing this topic alone, only three of them actually outlined concrete issues they had. You three know who you are, and I would like to thank you for your input as it allowed me to tweak this chapter to better create a base for my story. _

_As a whole, however, remember that this story is, again, not canon. Characters will act and respond differently than they do in their canon ventures. Why? Because this is fanfiction. I have the opportunity to flesh out backstories and motivations for characters as I see fit - but these motivations (etc) _will be explained_. Just not yet! It wouldn't be compelling if I just laid out everything about a character at the beginning. You'll find out more about these characters and situations as they develop and more pieces of this grand puzzle come into play. _

**3) Various ways magic should've survived.** _There have been a few different things that people have been pointing out and, while I will address each of these things in-depth when they come up in the story, I'll talk briefly about them here, too. _**a****) Fidelius Charm.** _To my knowledge, we don't see this happen a whole lot. According to the wiki (which could totally be wrong, but that's what I've been going off of) the charm has been used only a handful of times. Twice by Dumbledore and once each by Bill and Arthur Weasley. So while it is possible that people were using the charm, there is no reason to suspect that it was in use._ **b) Muggleborns.** _Yes! Absolutely. But... Harry will be the last wizard. I have a plan for the muggleborns, and it fits nicely into Marvel lore. Feel free to speculate, because it'll be a while before anything develops on that front._ **3) ****It is unclear whether or not the _whole _magical world perished. **_As far as Harry knows, it has. I've dropped hints in, well, really every chapter, but we won't know for certain until Harry actually goes to investigate. They certainly weren't scorched by Fiendfyre, though. That was all Harry. _

**4) My Brit-Speak if wacky. **_Oh, absolutely. That is an extremely valid point that I really can't (nor want to) contend. I'm not British, nor have I ever been across the pond. I'm trying, but I don't know very much of their slang._


End file.
